ath running between the lines.
Amongst the useful is the vacoua or pandanus; whose leaves being strongly
fibrous, long, spreading, and armed with prickles, both form a tolerable
fence and supply a good material for making sacks, bags, etc. It is only
whilst young that the vacoua answers this double purpose; but the tree is
twelve or fifteen years before it arrives at maturity, and the leaves may
be annually cut: no other use is made of the fruit than to plant it for
the production of other trees. A double row of the tall jamb-rosa, or
rose apple, makes the principal divisions in some plantations, forming
agreeable, shady walks; and from the shelter it affords is preferred for
surrounding the coffee trees, which require the utmost care to protect
them from hurricanes. A tree once violently shaken, dies five or six
months afterward, as it does if water stand several days together round
its foot; sloping situations, where the water may run off, are therefore
preferred for it, and if rocky they are the more advantageous, from the
firmness which the roots thereby acquire to resist the hurricanes. Rows
of the banana, of which the island possesses a great variety of species,
are also planted by the sides of the paths leading through the
habitations, sometimes behind the vacoua, but often alone; the pine apple
serves the same purpose in others, as do the peach and other fruit trees
where the paths are more considerable. A long and strong grass, called
_vitti-vert_, is occasionally preferred for the lines of division; this
is cut twice or thrice in the year to be used as thatch, for which it is
well adapted. Hedges of the ever-flowering China rose, and of the
_netshouly_, a bushy shrub from India which prospers in every soil, are
often used in place of the tall jamb-rosa to form alleys leading up to
the house of the planter, and also the principal walks in his garden; the
waving bamboo, whose numberless uses are well known, is planted by the
sides of the rivers and canals.

A notion of the working and produce of a plantation at Vacouas will be
most concisely given by a statement of the ordinary expenses and returns;
and to render it more nearly applicable to the case of such persons in
Europe as might form the project of becoming settlers, I will suppose a
young man, with his wife and child, arrived at Mauritius with the
intention of employing his time and means on a plantation in this
district; and at the end of five years other